Drowning
by songsofthestars
Summary: The overwhelming pain is gone, but she's still drowning.Izzie's emotions after the S2 finale.


This is just an angsty little ficlet about Izzie's emotions during and after the season 2 finale. Not the most fascinating plot, but I hope it's enjoyable! Oh, one thing- I have a horrible memory, so I can't remember if Izzie ever used the expression I'm saying she doesn't understand. If so, just pretend she didn't.

* * *

Izzie has never understood it when people say they're so heartbroken, it feels like they can't breathe. She thinks it's because she's a doctor. She's spent so much time studying what it's _actually_ like when a human can no longer breathe, she's seen people have their last breath. How could she compare that to something emotional? But right now, lying in bed with Denny, her head resting on his (unmoving) chest, she thinks she might finally get what they mean. Her chest is feeling painfully tight, and her throat is burning,but she's trying to ignore it. She can't have a breakdown, because that's going to make this all too real. If she makes herself believe that there's nothing to cry over, then she can just pretend she's lying in bed with Denny as he sleeps, that the heartbeat she's hearing is his, not her own. She talks about what may have happened to cause Denny's death, but deep down, she's not believeing the words she hears coming out of her own mouth. She's vaguely aware of her friends talking to her, but she barely hears them. She doesn't _want_ to hear them, because she knows the things they're saying are going to conflict with her make believe world, and she's not ready for that, so she asks them all to leave her alone with Denny. Alex steps closer to her, and tells her that it's not Denny, it stopped being Denny the moment he...died, and Izzie just wants to cover her ears and shout that she can't hear him. Denny can't really be dead, he'd proposed to her just that day! She thinks about the bridal magazine she'd bought on her way home from the hospital earlier that day, and thrown on her bed to read later that night. 

_'I guess there's no point in reading it now...'_

And that one, simple thought is what finally breaks her. She bursts into pained sobs as she acknowledges that Denny really did die, all alone in the hospital bed he hated so much, before they even got to do so much as look for an engagement ring. Alex scoops her off the bed, into his arms, and Izzie clings to him. It's a sweet gesture on his part, but it really doesn't matter that it's him, it could have been a total stranger and she would have clung to them. Izzie finally understands what people mean when they say it hurts too much to breathe, because she's feeling that now. It's like she's drowning, like the pain is a huge wave, filling her lungs, crashing against her, and she desperately needs a lifeline. Alex just happens to provide that.

Eventually, she calms down. Keeping with the analogy, she thinks she's reached the point where she's finally been pushed under by the waves, and she's lost conciousness. The overwhelming pain is gone, but she's still drowning. She runs into Bailey and Webber as she's going downstairs, and she tells them that she's quitting. Being at the hospital after this is only going to remind her of Denny, and it's not that she doesn't want to remember him, it's just that she doesn't want to remember him _here,_ in the place he hated being, in the place where he died.

Along with George, Alex, and surprisingly, Callie, to keep her company, Izzie waits for his family. She had always assumed that they lived far away, and that was why they never visited Denny, but it turns out, they live fairly close, and could have stopped by. She talks to some of the nurses, and discovers that he'd requested they not be called. He spoke to them on his cell phone every other day, and acted like he was at home, and everything was fine. He didn't want them to see him until he got the heart, if he did, because he knew if his family saw him like this so soon before he died, that would be their memory of him, lying in a hospital bed, and he hadn't wanted that. Izzie understands it, but she just regrets that it means she never got to meet her fiancee's family while her fiancee was still able to introduce them.

George, Alex, and Callie all suck in their breath sharply, and she looks up from her hands (she'd been picturing what her wedding band would have looked liked), just in time to see Denny being wheeled off to the morgue, and she wants nothing more than to be wheeled off with him. Afterall, her heart is useless now, and she still feels like a drowning victim.


End file.
